Cost is back at the top of the finance agenda. As revenue growth slows and the margin support of recent price increases fades, most chief financial officers expect to cut costs again within the next two years. Many of them did the same thing only three or four years ago.
This report, our second annual study of cost management, asks why. We surveyed 412 chief financial officers and finance directors at companies with annual revenue above $500 million, and compared their answers with the results of more than sixty cost programs we have reviewed directly. The picture is consistent: companies are good at finding savings and much less good at keeping them.
The report sets out where savings leak, the practices that distinguish companies that retain them, and a short diagnostic finance leaders can use before launching their next program.
Key findings
New programs are coming. 61 percent of respondents expect to launch a new company-wide cost program before the end of 2028. Among those, 70 percent ran a comparable program within the previous five years.
Savings fade. On average, respondents estimate that 41 percent of the savings reported by their last program had eroded within three years. Only 12 percent believe their savings held in full.
Tracking stops at the tracker. Only one in four CFOs reconciles program savings with the general ledger. The rest rely on program reporting that is not tied to budgets.
Headcount is overweighted. Respondents expected 55 percent of their next program's savings to come from headcount, while third-party spend and complexity reduction account for most of the savings that last in our program reviews.
Incentives rarely reach below the top. Fewer than one in five companies link the bonuses of managers below the executive team to cost outcomes.
The best programs look similar. Companies that retained more than 85 percent of savings were three times as likely to write savings into budgets and six times as likely to keep tracking cost for two years after the program ended.
Methodology
The survey was conducted online between March 3 and April 10, 2026. Respondents were chief financial officers or finance directors at companies with annual revenue above $500 million, across fourteen countries in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Financial services, industrials, consumer and retail, healthcare, energy and technology are each represented by at least fifty responses.
Survey results were supplemented by a review of 63 cost programs completed by Vertex clients between 2019 and 2024, comparing savings reported at program close with operating cost in audited accounts two and three years later, adjusted for volume and inflation. Twenty follow-up interviews with survey respondents informed the case examples in the report.
